Twitter Hacked, 250,000 User Accounts Potentially Compromised

Twitter Hacked, 250,000 User Accounts Potentially Compromised

Twitter disclosed on Friday evening that its systems had been attacked in the past week by an unidentified group of hackers. As a result of
the the attack, the hackers may have had access to the usernames, email addresses and other sensitive information of nearly a quarter of a million
twitter users.

Stories are hitting the wire in regards to an attack on Twitter. As of yet it doesn't appear anyone has claimed responsibility.

Here's an excerpt from the blog post earlier today:

As you may have read, there’s been a recent uptick in large-scale security attacks aimed at U.S. technology and media companies. Within the last
two weeks, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have chronicled breaches of their systems, and Apple and Mozilla have turned off Java by default
in their browsers.

This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live
attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later. However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had
access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords – for approximately
250,000 users.

As a precautionary security measure, we have reset passwords and revoked session tokens for these accounts. If your account was one of them, you will
have recently received (or will shortly) an email from us at the address associated with your Twitter account notifying you that you will need to
create a new password. Your old password will not work when you try to log in to Twitter.

I don't have a Twitter account, but if you do, you may want to check it is not one that was affected, or look to see if you've received an email
yet.

The blog post mentions the NYT and WSJ attacks and that Java has been turned off by default in Apple and Mozilla browsers.

They then echo the DHS warning later in the blog post...

We also echo the advisory from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and security experts to encourage users to disable Java on their computers
in their browsers. For instructions on how to disable Java, read this recent Slate article.

So is this attack a result of turning Java off or did the WSJ and NYT not heed the warning and turn Java off and as a result they were hacked?

I find the mention of the Java thingy a bit peculiar and almost a cop out, at least on the surface.

“This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident,” Bob Lord, Twitter’s director of information
security, said in a blog post. “The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently
similarly attacked.”

The more frightening they can make it sound the more scarring they can produce. Scar someone enough and they'll be all the more willing to hand over
freedoms to get rid of their fears.

The internet is not scary. Technology is not scary. If people today are too ignorant or incapable of figuring out the basics of what they are using...
I got some nice beach front property in Arizona along with some bridges in New York you can buy for pennies on the dollar!

On that note, and to anyone that does have a Twitter account, what type of information could potentially be compromised if one's account was to be
accessed illegally?

It depends a lot of people use real names like famous actors, comedians and the like use their real information. I on the other hand just use an alias
I go by and has nothing more than that. So they wouldn't get much from me.

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